Thurston County Sheriff Derek Sanders said Sunday that another inmate has died inside the county jail, though the cause of death has not yet been determined by the Coroner’s Office.
Sanders acknowledged the facility has faced recurring problems with drugs being smuggled in and distributed among inmates.
He said that while each inmate death reignites speculation that corrections deputies may be responsible for supplying narcotics, there has never been an allegation of that kind.
“Not one inmate, social worker, nurse, technician, mental health provider, or attorney has made a single allegation that narcotics have been supplied by a deputy,” Sanders said. “If a deputy were to supply drugs inside our jail, they would be fired and arrested for numerous felony crimes.”
Instead, Sanders said information consistently points to inmates concealing drugs before they are booked.
According to reports from inmates in recovery, drugs are often swallowed in balloons prior to arrest, later recovered, and then distributed inside the jail.
The sheriff linked the problem to state laws that restrict how inmates can be searched.
He said the county’s body scanner no longer provides clear enough imaging to detect narcotics in stomach or rectal cavities, and strip searches are only permitted under very limited circumstances.
“This means that nearly every inmate booked into jail will enter without a strip search and without a clear picture of what is inside of them,” Sanders said.
Sanders emphasized that the challenges mirror what is happening across the community, where deputies and officers respond daily to overdose calls.
He said expecting jails to remain unaffected by the broader drug epidemic is unrealistic.
He also defended the work of corrections deputies, calling their job critical to public safety despite the risks they face.
“It is beyond apparent to me that the deputies inside our jail do their jobs to the best of their ability without the expectation of ever being thanked,” he said.
Sanders encouraged anyone with evidence of deputy misconduct to come forward, noting that complaints can be filed online or by phone at 360-704-2740.
But he expressed frustration at what he described as unsubstantiated claims that undermine staff.
“Absent substantiated claims, I find it disheartening to villainize the same deputies who, due to no fault of their own, are being regularly required to provide life saving care because of rules they neither made nor asked for,” he said.
He closed by warning that as long as state rules continue to limit jail staff from preventing drugs from entering the facility, the problem will likely worsen.
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